The Cardinals and Yadier Molina have had discussions about him joining the major league coaching staff next year, reports Katie Woo of The Athletic. The report adds that there’s mutual interest from both parties.
Molina is obviously well known around baseball and particularly in St. Louis. He just wrapped up a playing career that went from 2004 to 2022, all of that in Cardinal red. Now 41, he has previously expressed a desire to move towards managing/coaching in his post-playing career, having already gotten some experience outside of Major League Baseball. Molina has done some managing in the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League as well as acting as skipper for Puerto Rican teams in international play, including the most recent World Baseball Classic.
His potential role with the Cardinals next year isn’t exactly clear, but Woo relays that it’s expected it would be an everyday position. It doesn’t currently appear as though any of the current coaches are in jeopardy, with Molina likely to be an addition rather than a replacement. Woo points out that the club had one of the smaller staffs in the league in 2023, with some players apparently expressing that there “simply wasn’t enough coaching to go around,” in Woo’s words.
Adding another coach, whether Molina or someone else, would obviously help if that’s a real problem for manager Oli Marmol and the rest of the staff. But Molina specifically could be a good fit, given his legendary status in the organization. There’s also the fact that the post-Molina era didn’t kick off with a bang. During Molina’s time as the club’s backstop, they made frequent postseason appearances and only finished below .500 once, back in 2007. But the first season after his retirement saw the club go 71-91 and fall to the basement of the National League Central.
There were whispers that some members of the St. Louis pitching staff weren’t happy with the transition to Willson Contreras, who was signed last offseason to take over Molina’s job behind the plate. Contreras was even moved off the catching position for a time this year, working as the designated hitter only, though he was back behind the plate a week later. If there’s any lingering discord between the pitchers and Contreras, perhaps Molina’s presence as a coach could help to bridge that gap.
Turning to the club’s roster, Woo discusses the club’s impending rotation work. President of baseball operations John Mozeliak has openly expressed a desire to bring in three starting pitchers this winter, in order to replace the retiring Adam Wainwright and impending free agents Jack Flaherty and Jordan Montgomery, both of whom were traded prior to the deadline. Free agency is obviously one avenue to pursuing upgrades, but the Cardinals haven’t traditionally been big spenders in that regard. Their largest free agent signing in franchise history is the $120M deal they gave to Matt Holliday back in 2010, with Mike Leake’s $80M deal in 2015 the largest they’ve given to a pitcher.
It seems they are giving some thought to breaking one or both of those records. They have already been connected to Sonny Gray and Aaron Nola, each of whom would likely require a deal larger than Leake’s in order to sign. Woo adds that the club is open to a reunion with Montgomery, though he’s likely pushing his next contract well into nine-figure territory, based both on his regular season work and strong playoff performance with the Rangers thus far.
Woo also adds that the Cards will “check in” on Japanese hurler Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported last week that the club is indeed interested in Yamamoto, though the extent of that interest isn’t clear. Speculation around Yamamoto’s potential contract seems to suggest he could be in line for something around $200M, based both on his youth and his excellent results in Nippon Professional Baseball. Having just turned 25 in August, he’s far younger than typical free agents, and he also has an ERA of 1.82 over his seven NPB seasons.
Giving out a mega deal for a starting pitcher would be new territory for the Cards, but it sounds like they are exploring every avenue in order to put this rough season behind them. That will likely involve trading from their position player mix as well, though who they are willing to part with remains to be seen.
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